Penn State trustee Al Lord pushes for board to reconsider the Freeh Report on Sandusky scandal

SCHUYLKILL HAVEN - A moment many Penn State alumni and Joe Paterno fans had been waiting for for two years has arrived.

The university's board of trustees is being forced to revisit the controversial Freeh Report on
the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal,
which helped validate charges that Penn State's most senior officials engaged in a cover up.

It came in the form of a motion by new alumni-elected trustee Al Lord that the board "immediately undertake to identify matters not fully investigated and complete the investigation of such matters."

The motion, raised at the close of Friday's public trustees meeting, was quickly tabled on advice of university general counsel Steve Dunham, who asserted that Lord's proposal "overlaps in significant part with multiple legal proceedings... and multiple legal issues."

Board Chairman Keith Masser, however, affirmed later that he plans to hold that closed-door discussion at the board's September meeting.

Depending how that goes, Lord's resolution could be considered by the full board as early as the public session that week.

Lord's resolution goes to the heart of an issue that has roiled the Penn State universe since former FBI director
Louis Freeh released his voluminous report in July 2012:
did he over-reach in concluding that there was a cover-up at Penn State, involving the university's senior-most leaders?

At the time, Freeh charged that former President Graham Spanier, his top aides Gary Schultz and Tim Curley, and then-head football coach Joe Paterno deliberately worked to keep a 2001 allegation of sexual abuse by Sandusky from reaching outside investigators.

Lord's complaint, like many, is that Freeh's conclusions were based on an incomplete investigation in which many case principals never had the chance to tell their side of the story.

"Seven key witnesses to the worst of the deeds that are referenced in the Freeh Report were not talked to," Lord, a former CEO of the student loan giant Sallie Mae, told reporters after the meeting.

"That's not finished."

It's not clear whether that would change now. Many of the witnesses Lord cited were held off-limits to Freeh - whose investigators did speak with more than 400 individuals - by the state prosecutors.

Others, including Curley and Schultz, did not speak on the advice of their attorneys. Schultz's attorney, Thomas Farrell of Pittsburgh, did not respond to requests for comment Friday evening.

But Freeh's detractors will likely be pleased just to know that trustees are going to be made to confront the issue. Indeed, alumni critics in attendance at Friday's meeting gave Lord a round of applause when he raised his motion.

Masser on Friday said his vote on Lord's proposal will depend on September's discussion and what he hears from Dunham, among others, about how any reopening of Sandusky-related issues would dovetail with Penn State's legal obligations.

He does have questions, he said, about the effectiveness of Penn State pushing further into the case with the criminal case still pending.

Lord, however, said he's through with waiting.

"The board hired the guy," he said. "They spent eight million bucks on it... We ought to at least finish."